Growing up was lonely. Thoughts bounced around my head until I could vocalize them. Every adult had already gone through this process, so they told me to stop asking questions, heard a million times. 

Bonds formed only to fail. The clothes I wore, the place I slept, and the school I attended changed every few years. The second I slowed down, I looked for change. I needed it, craved it. I unconsciously learned that to change is to be consistent.

I was scrolling through photos on my old turquoise iPod Nano one day, looking for memories I could upload to my phone. Whether out of boredom or genuine interest, I was searching for something tangible. One photo stood out to me. I am six or seven years old, in a pink dress over a white long-sleeve t-shirt, standing in the living room of my old New York apartment. Behind me hangs a faded print of an Italian olive oil ad. My arms and legs stretch out, forming a starfish. Mouth open in exclamation, I seem happy.

I felt no connection to this younger me. This struck me as odd; she is Emilia Lynn Cafiso just as much as I am. We’ve experienced the same things: preschool graduation, cutting bangs on my little sister, eating Cheerios at the old wooden kitchen table.

Her memories erratically come to me throughout the day. I will see Emilia letting go of a monarch butterfly in her baby carrot fingers. A smell drifting from a classroom window during second period will show me the memory of making fun of my father’s onion cologne. A song from a shuffled playlist will remind me of releasing monarch butterflies from a net-made enclosure in her neighborhood preschool, flowers painted on the brick walls, and Goldfish an hour after lunch. I will focus on the gravel beneath my bare feet, a friend urging me to name the butterfly before it flies out of sight, and the wooden fence of the preschool's backyard because responsibility has become anxiety, and I would rather travel to a time when I had neither. I grasp these memories as tightly as possible, relishing our little time together.

Since she has become my past, I am now her future. We will pick the skin around our nails until it bleeds, step on a sidewalk crack in the hopes our mother’s back cracks, and point our middle finger to the sky to see if lightning strikes.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if we crossed paths on the street. We’re almost identical, except for the aquiline German nose I developed in middle school. We lose the teddy bear cheeks after fifth grade, and due to an unfortunate shaving incident, the ends of our eyebrows never grow back in the same way. Nevertheless, we are one. Young Emilia would look at me in confusion, think briefly of our resemblance, and continue to walk, counting the steps in a city block. She would not be phased.

The thing is, young Emilia's life was charmed and magical. She stared at the sun for too long because she thought it would give her powers, but it only left little black spots in her vision for a few hours. The rising voices from her parents’ dinner parties were the whispers and shadows around her bedroom, protecting her from the unknown. She would create imaginary friends only to become bored of them a day later.

Young Emilia would undoubtedly be confused if she saw me walking down the street, two feet taller with maroon hair and a nose piercing, but she would not be surprised. She can mull over time travel, doppelgangers, world-jumping, and believe them all possible. 

In the photo on my iPod, Emilia smiled bright and wide, reaching out to the person behind the camera. Her world fit within a four-bedroom apartment, thinking only of friends, stuffed animals, and sugar cereal at the supermarket, or rather, begging her mother to buy it. Mine fits within the world itself, thinking of poetry, the rise of fifth-wave feminism, and college plans.

Then again, our worlds exist in the same space. We think of dystopian fiction, our mother’s bolognese, and what it would be like to fall in love one day. So when we pass each other on the street, young Emilia will smile, think briefly of our resemblance, and continue to walk. I will think about who she becomes and pull out my Notes app to draft this story.